*Female collective Baque Luar, Rio de Janeiro duo Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes, Desta French & Friends as part of Latinas of London, Brazil’s Nacao Zumbi amongst names added to line-up*
**Newly announced acts join multi-million-selling Los Tigres del Norte performing their first ever UK show, the iconic Colombian multi-instrumentalist Fruko, Mexican-American singer-songwriter Lila Downs,Argentinian Nu Cumbia singer-songwriter La Yegros, and French-Chilean vocalist Ana Tijoux who returns to Londonfollowing the release of her first album in almost a decade**
“The capital’s annual Latin music bash always combines exuberance with intellect”
The Times
12th April – 22nd April 2024
La Linea – The London Latin Music Festival – has unveiled a second wave of shows for its twenty-fourth edition this April. Celebrating all corners of the diverse and increasingly popular Latin music world, this year’s event will host an array of specially curated shows across the Capital from April 12th – 22nd.
The biggest celebration of Latin music and culture in London will this year welcome to the Jazz Café on Saturday 20th April Desta French & Friends as part of Latinas of London – a line-up of independent Latina artists who weave their Latin American heritage and British upbringing into their own unique form of music influenced by jazz, hip hop and cumbia. Confirmed to perform on the same night at Lewisham’s Fox and Firkin is female collective Baque Luar (meaning ‘moonlit beat’) who are united by their love of Brazilian and Afro Brazilian roots music mixing multivocal compositions and arrangements with powerful percussive grooves.
Frequent collaborators, and two of Rio de Janeiro’s most forward-thinking musicians, Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes bring a brand new Rio samba sound with elements of funk and psychedelia to Cafe Oto on Sunday 21st April while fellow Brazilians, and one of the most important groups to come out of the Manguebeat movement in the 1990s, Nacao Zumbi play the Jazz Café on Monday 22nd April experimenting with rock, punk, funk, hip hop, soul, Pernambuco’s regional rhythms and other forms of Brazilian traditional music.
The newly announced acts join the likes of multimillion album-selling Norteño group Los Tigres del Norte (performing their first ever UK show), Mexican-American singer-songwriter and one of the most influential artists in Latin America Lila Downs,Argentinian Nu Cumbia singer-songwriter La Yegros presenting her combination of electronica and psychedelic sounds with musical traditions from Argentinian culture, the iconic Colombian multi-instrumentalist Fruko set to perform alongside The Bonita House Band consisting of an all-star line-up of the new generation of London jazz musicians,and French-Chilean vocalist Ana Tijoux who returns to Londonahead of the release of her first album in almost a decade.
Created in 2001 by Como No, the UK’s main producer of live events from Latin America, to showcase the Latin contribution to the wider musical world and to celebrate new artists, new collaborations and new projects, La Linea has built a global reputation for bringing together a host of outstanding Latin music artists in London every April. This, the twenty-fourth edition of La Linea, will be the last to be led by its founder Andy Wood.
La Linea 24 is supported by the Arts Council England as part of its support for Como No as an Arts Council of England National Portfolio Organisation.
Tickets are on sale now and available from www.lalineafestival.com
La Linea 2024:
Lila Downs
Friday 12 April
Barbican
www.comono.co.uk/la-linea/lila-downs-3/
Ana Tijoux
Saturday 13 April
Village Underground
Los Tigres del Norte
Sunday 14 April
Eventim Apollo
https://www.comono.co.uk/la-linea/los-tigres-del-norte/
La Yegros
Tuesday 16 April
Jazz Café
Fruko & The Bonita House Band
Friday 19 April
Jazz Café
Baque Luar
Saturday 20 April
Fox & Firkin
Desta French & Friends: Latinas of London
Saturday 20 April
Jazz Café
Domenico Lancellotti & Ricardo Dias Gomes
Sunday 21 April
Cafe Oto
Nacao Zumbi
Monday 22 April
Jazz Café
Facebook: lalineafestival
Twitter: @lalineafest #lalinea24
Instagram: lalineafestival
For more information, please contact Baxter PR:
E : joe@baxterpr.com / tom@baxterpr.com / poppy@baxterpr.com
Notes to editors:
Created in 2001 by Como No, the UK’s main producer of live events from Latin America, to showcase the Latin contribution to the wider musical world and to celebrate new artists, new collaborations and new projects, La Linea has built a global reputation for bringing together a host of outstanding Latin music artists in London every April.
La Linea 2024 Listings:
Lila Downs
Friday 12 April
Barbican
www.comono.co.uk/la-linea/lila-downs-3/
Grammy award winning Mexican-American singer-songwriter Lila Downs brings her unforgettable live show to the Hall, for a performance across Latin American and wider popular music traditions.
Lila Downs is one of the most influential artists in Latin America. Growing up in both Minnesota and Oaxaca, Mexico to a mother from the Mixtec indigenous group and a Scottish-American father, Lila’s music often focuses on social justice, giving a voice to migrants, indigenous people and women. She sings in Spanish, English and various Native American languages, such as Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahuatl, Maya and Purepecha.
Lila’s compositions combine genres and rhythms as diverse as Mexican ranchers and corridos, boleros, jazz, hip-hop, cumbia and North American folk music, to create a distinctive sound that has earned her international recognition on the world stage. She has collaborated with the likes of Mercedes Sosa, Norah Jones, Yo Yo Ma, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
Los Tigres Del Norte
Sunday 14 April
Eventim Apollo
https://www.comono.co.uk/la-linea/los-tigres-del-norte/
Long-awaited UK debut for Los Tigres del Norte the Norteño group from Mexico, based in California. The group is centred on lead vocalist Jorge Hernández, joined by his brothers Hernán, Eduardo and Luis, and cousin Oscar Lara. Their parents were campesinos – small farmers living and working in a tiny village in Sinaloa. Since the late 1950s this family band has detailed the struggles and triumphs, romances and heartbreak of working people, families, immigrants, outlaws and farmers. Over more than 70 albums, they have infused Norteño, an accordion-based polka music indigenous to Northern Mexico, with boleros, cumbias, rock, and waltzes.
Their 1974 breakthrough single, Contrabando y Traición, about a drug deal and love story gone bad, established them in the US. 1984’s Jaula de Oro was their first chart topper, and 1985’s A Ti Madrecitamarked their first million seller. 1989’s Corridos Prohibidoskicked off the modern narcocorrido movement, paving the way for the 21st century’s alterna-movimiento. In 2014 Los Tigres del Norte released the album Realidades, which contains the song Era Diferente about a lesbian teenager who falls in love with her best friend; according to Jorge Hernández, this is the first time a norteño group has ever written a gay love song.
In 2019, Los Tigres del Norte were the first musical act since Johny Cash to film a concert at Folsom Prison. In 2021 they released Y Su Palabra Es La Ley: Homenaje A Vicente Fernandez – a tribute to the legendary mariachi and ranchera singer – and followed it with La Reunion in 2022.
The band is the only Mexican group to win 7 Grammy awards and 12 Latin Grammys. In addition, the band has made 40 films alongside the Almada brothers (Mario and Fernando) among other well-known Mexican actors.
In May 2000, Los Tigres del Norte founded the Los Tigres del Norte Foundation, which is committed to fostering appreciation and preservation of Mexican and Mexican-American folklore.
Ana Tijoux
Saturday 13 April
Village Underground
Rare London show for the Chilean rapper and her band playing tracks from her new album Vida.
Ana Tijoux – MC, singer, poet and lyricist – is known for her willingness to confront social injustice and her commitment to nonviolence, and it is just as common to see her on Al-Jazeera or Democracy Now! as it is to see her grace the stages of Lollapalooza or Roskilde. Re-connecting with her roots and fighting for a whole continent, she has become the voice of a generation, not only in Chile but for Latinos worldwide.
Earlier this year she put out a new singleNiñx, and more recently Tania, a tribute to her sister who died four years ago. They are both from her forthcoming new studio album Vida, her first since 2014’s Vengo. Tijoux was recently chosen by Billboard as the Best Female Rapper in history. She has collaborated with artists such as Jorge Drexler, Molotov, Los Chikos del Maíz, Julieta Venegas and Sara Hebe among many others.
Born in France, she is the daughter of two Chilean refugees who left their homeland under the military coup of Pinochet in 1973. Tijoux formed her first rap group in 1975. In 2006, Tijoux started a solo career when she crossed over to the mainstream of Latin pop after her collaboration with Mexican singer Julieta Venegas in the radio hit Eres para mí. Her track 1977 had breakout success when it featured in Breaking Bad (2010); La Bala (2012) became an international smash and gained a Grammy nomination. Vengo was released in 2014, a mix of hip-hop, neo-soul and Andean folk and in the same year she won her first Latin Grammy for Record of the Year for the song Universos paralelos, a collaboration with Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler. In 2020, Tijoux’s song No estamos solas was chosen as the theme song for La Jauría, the first Chilean Amazon Prime Video original series.
La Yegros
Tuesday 16 April
Jazz Café
La Yegros returns to La Linea with a brand new show and album released in early 2024.
It was 2013 when, with a cumbia beat, Viene de Mí propelled La Yegros to the ears of the world. La Yegros is Queen of Nu-Cumbia, a mix of South American musical traditions with Jamaican dancehall and electronica. La Yegros brings pyrotechnics, breathtaking energy and her exuberant personality, inventing her own folklore by knitting together new rhythms and integrating original sounds (bassoon, transverse flute, flamenco guitar) with echoes of reggae and funk.
Her parents come from Misiones, a province bordering Brazil and Paraguay, filled with the sounds of Chamamé, Carnavalito and Colombian cumbia. La Yegros herself is a native of Buenos Aires, alive with dancehall and electronic bass. These influences fused in two successful albums, Magnetismo (2016) and Suelta (2019).
“If ever Pedro Almodóvar wanted a new muse, he need look no further than La Yegros.” Songlines
Fruko & The Bonita House Band
Friday 19 April
Jazz Café
The Afrosound of Colombia: Experiments, explorations and psychedlia in the 60s & 70s in Colombia.
Fruko – Colombian Maestro and living icon – leads a live exploration of his back catalogue as a composer, performer, and producer: a journey through his contribution to salsa, tropical music, psychedelia, Latin Jazz and what we could describe as the ‘Fruko sound.’ Joined by the one of the most exciting Latin bands in the UK, The Bonita House Band – comprising some of the best musicians on the London scene – Fruko showcases music from the main projects which he has directed, produced and written for: Fruko y Sus Tesos, The Latin Brothers, Wganda Kenya, Afrosound and Los Corraleros de Majagual.
He started playing music with Los Corraleros De Majagual when he was only 13 years old, and went on to record over 800 albums. He was right-hand man for Colombian vocalists and artists such as Joe Arroyo, Wilson Saoco and Piper Pimienta, and wrote and produced some of the best known salsa songs worldwide.
Globally known for his commercial success with his band Fruko y Sus Tesos, Fruko has a much more experimental and diasporic sound too, one that record collectors and musicologists around the world have praised for years. This sound was immortalised through his involvement in the bands Afrosound and Wganda Kenya.
Between the 1970s and the late 1980s, Wganda Kenya formed part of a small collection of pioneering Afro-Colombian bands that ruled the airwaves in northern Colombian cities like Cartagena and Barranquilla. They were put together in the 1970s by Discos Fuentes, the famous Medellín-based label (often described as Colombia’s version of ‘Motown’), along with sister group Afrosound. The name Wganda Kenya invokes an African heritage, and their music combined the furious rhythms inherited from the Fela Kuti albums that were arriving in Colombia’s coastal regions at the time with a large spoonful of 70s funk, and their own electric, Latin flavour.
Afrosound was a domestic version of the emerging African and Latin rock sounds coming from outside the country. Inspired by groups like Osibisa and Santana it emulated the guitar-heavy tropical sounds emanating from Perú and Ecuador at the time. There were improvised vocal asides (called ‘inspiraciones’), plus a barrage of synths, drum machines and other electronic flourishes. The most famous Afrosound hit of all, Caliventura, is a genius blend of funk and cumbia.
Desta French & Friends: Latinas of London
Saturday 20 April
Jazz Café
We welcome Desta French & Friends, a line up of independent Latina artists making a stamp on the London music scene and beyond. A live band of Latinx musicians perform with original music makers weaving their Latin American heritage and their British upbringing to create something truly new and exciting.
In an industry where women and particularly Latin women are judged against each other and unfairly compared, this pledge to solidarity and sisterhood is creating a new and powerful movement coming out of the UK underground.
Chonga mother and Camden native Desta French personifies a new era of Latinx creatives in the city, a generation nurtured on the language and music of their parents, but raised with the lingua franca of their hometown. She draws from an extensive range of genres including jazz, hip hop, cumbia and was the first UK Latin Artist to be supported on BBC Radio with an all-Spanish language song in 2020.
Having reached viral success on TikTok with her indie bachata song Call me by your name, indie Latin artist Sophie Castillo creates a fusion of Latin, indie and pop music. Generating millions of views organically across platforms, she pairs flowing vocals with catchy melodies that echo the romance of the Latin music she grew up listening to, creating a dreamy and glamorous sound.
Jsca blends the magic of Latin folklore with a unique twist. She has released her second EP Telenovela along with impressive visuals to accompany all five tracks. She is a currently underrated voice of the Latinx diaspora in London, but due great things ahead.
British Colombian singer/songwriter from London Milena Sanchez– best known as being a third of award winning podcast The Receipts – has now embarked on her solo career fusing a mix of house/R&B and Latin pop with her undeniable vocal range. This will be her first live performance since the release of two singles last year, Waters and Daddy Issues.
Baque Luar
Saturday 20 April
Fox & Firkin
On the back of acclaim for their debut album Brilha, Baque Luar play their first London show of 2024 as part of a line up put together with Movimientos.
Baque Luar, a collective of female and non-binary vocalists and percussionists hailing from diverse backgrounds, are united by their love of Brazilian and Afro Brazilian roots music. Meaning ‘moonlit beat’, the group combines original multivocal compositions and arrangements with powerful percussive grooves. This unique mixture has led to acclaimed live performances across the UK, including The Great Escape, Shambala and Medicine festivals, the Southbank Centre and a Boiler Room performance organised by DJ and broadcaster Zakia Sewell.
Brilha, their recently released debut album, is a work of praise for this earth and for the human and beyond-human connections which nourish us. It features a collaboration with Maracatu Leão Coroado (the oldest maracatu nation in the world), amongst an array of powerful original tracks. Singles already released from the album include Full Rivers Oxum, Brilha and Arranjo, which have received over 70,000 streams globally.
DJ Tudo aka Alfredo Bello, is a musician, DJ and tireless researcher of Brazilian music and culture. As the founder of the celebrated label Mundo Melhor, he travels throughout Brazil in search of new sounds, exploring the originality of traditional rituals and ceremonies. He has also travelled across 30 countries performing at festivals like Roskilde, Womad & Bahidora, as well as playing and recording with the likes of Gilberto Gil, Lee Scratch Perry, Ana Tijoux, Mad Professor and many more.
Domenico Lancellotti & Ricardo Dias Gomes
Sunday 21 April
Cafe Oto
Double bill from two of Rio de Janeiro’s most forward-thinking musicians and frequent collaborators Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes. They have been revered names in Brazilian music over the past 20 years.
As a member of the +2’s, with Moreno Veloso and Kassin, Domenico released a trio of albums on Luaka Bop in the early 00s that pioneered a new Rio samba sound with elements of funk and psychedelia. Expect samba, synths and krautrock from him as per his recent album sramba released by Mais Um earlier this year, to critical acclaim.
Multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Dias Gomes first came to notice as a member of Caetano Veloso’s band Cê which helped reinvigorate Caetano’s career with a sound influenced by British new wave. He produced sramba and here he will showcase tracks from his recent album of experimental mûsica popular brasileira Muito Sol released by Brighton’s Hive Mind Records.
Nacao Zumbi
Monday 22 April
Jazz Café
Nação Zumbi marks 2024 with three decades of musical resistance. Formerly led by Chico Science, the band are pioneers of Manguebeat, a unique style of hip-hop originating from Recife Brazil.
At the core of Manguebeat, merging Northeastern rhythms with electronica and social critique, the band steps forward after the passing of Chico Science, carrying on with lyrics that spotlight inequalities and champion cultural diversity.
Their impact goes beyond Brazil, introducing Manguebeat to global stages. Today, they’re more than a band: they’re the poetic voice of protest, a beacon of innovation, and a standard-bearer for social battles.
Originating from the banks of the Capibaribe River in Recife, Nação Zumbi have been hailed as one of the most important groups to come out of the Manguebeat movement in the 1990s. They experiment with rock, punk, funk, hip hop, soul, Pernambuco’s regional rhythms and Brazilian traditional music.
